Form, attention and a southern New Ireland life cycle*

From a phenomenological perspective, form is intrinsically linked to attention. This article explores that relationship with a view to highlighting the potential importance of the experience of form to anthropology. It is suggested that in Melanesia the management of attention as a mechanism for the control of form and vice versa are key vehicles for the social definition and transformation of persons. It takes as a case study the life‐cycle rituals of Lak in southern New Ireland, where the articulation and disarticulation of the form of persons and tubuan spirits are linked together and also, through a discourse of remembering and forgetting, with social attention.